SHERMAN OAKS >> Anyone across Los Angeles who ever found a political campaign flier or advertisement rubber-banded to their doorknob can probably blame the Junk Mail King.

And chances are that anyone on Skid Row who lined up over the decades for homemade Christmas dinners at the door of the junk mail distributor probably knew and loved Feliciano Valdez Gil.

Gil, of Sherman Oaks, died Monday of causes stemming from a lifetime of smoking at Providence St. Joseph Medical Center in Burbank, family members said. He was 77.

“He was giving, always giving. He was never a taker, ever,” said his daughter Carrie Slakoff of Valencia before a funeral Mass at St. Frances de Sales Catholic Church and burial at Forest Lawn Memorial-Park in Hollywood Hills on Saturday. “If you needed something and you asked for it, he’d give it to you.

“Oh my God, he’ll be missed by many, so many.”

Best known as “Gil,” the junk mail magnate, philanthropist and a legendary supporter of Little League baseball in the northeast San Fernando Valley, was born on Sept. 21, 1936, in San Antonio, Texas.

When he was newly married at 17, he and his wife Gloria fled the Lone Star for the Golden State in search of a better life. They drove West with the clothes on their backs, $5 in each of their pockets and a trunk full of energy and hope.

After a few years in Echo Park, they would discover their Shangri-La in Sun Valley, where they would raise five children around a sparkling pool and take in Dodger baseball games, Disneyland, Saturday night Mass and Sunday Easter egg hunts at Brace Canyon Park.

But it was in the companies he founded — Gil’s Distributing Service in Los Angeles and Arcadia Addressing Co. in Arcadia — that touched millions of Angelenos by either attaching adverts to their front doors or stuffing their mailboxes with junk mail addressed to “residents.”

To distribute his door-to-door messages, Gil would often hire the homeless from Skid Row, handing them $50 to walk 10 blocks. “He knew which (men) he could trust,” Slakoff said. “At the drop of a hat, they would be there for my dad.”

And as a way of thanks each Christmas, his family and dozens of employees would cook for days and days to prepare the feast of all Christmas feasts — glistening turkey, roasted tri-tip, enchiladas, rice and beans. Salad. And plain water for the sacred day’s libation.

For decades, the line of holiday homeless would stretch around the block outside Gil’s office at 8th and San Pedro Street. Then Los Angeles County health officials, citing restaurant food serving regulations, shut down the homemade Christmas giveaway.

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Before it became a popular fundraising option, Gil and a friend would rent out Disneyland to raise money for the North Valley Jewish Community Center.

But it was in Sun Valley where the jovial Texan made his mark on kids. A TV boxing nut, Gil was even more passionate about baseball. For more than a dozen years, he coached Sun Valley Little League at a ballpark surrounded by dairy cows, first the Yankees, then the Indians.

He then founded an International Little League Team in the early 1970s that took young ball players throughout the U.S. and Mexico.

Forty years after they left the field, a dozen of his former Little League charges paid their respects at Forest Lawn this week with long-held tales of their beloved coach, Slakoff said. One player recalled fielding a fly ball and shouting “I got it, I got it, I got it.”

The baseball hit him squarely on the head, and he collapsed in a heap of tears. “Why are you crying?” asked Gil, who’d run out on the field. “I’m crying because I got hit in the head with the baseball,” the boy said.

“How do you think the baseball feels?” asked his coach.

Gil is survived by his wife of 60 years, Gloria; by a son Felix; a daughter, Debra Bartley; daughter Carrie Slakoff; and son Michael; five grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. A son, Raymond, preceded him in death.